


mind your mother's words

by thatsparrow



Category: Coraline (2009)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2019-01-07 20:44:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12240324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsparrow/pseuds/thatsparrow
Summary: She knows the door is locked, and she knows the key is gone, and still—sometimes—Coraline dreams of the Other World.





	mind your mother's words

**Author's Note:**

> title from "shankill butchers" by the decemberists

She knows the door is locked, and she knows the key is gone, and still—sometimes—Coraline dreams of the Other World.

It's not always bad, though, and that's maybe the worst part. That there will be moments when she argues with her parents over sitting still for holiday photos, or afternoons when a planned trip to the movies is sidetracked by her father's sudden and unignorable burst of inspiration, and she'll fall asleep with resentment sitting like hard watermelon seeds in her stomach, tasting the sour edge of anger in her mouth. And even though she knows it's not fair, those are the nights when she dreams of the best parts of the Other World — the flutter of mechanical grasshopper wings under her knees above a garden of electric-blue flowers, swinging and then flying between trapeze bars with Miss Spink and Miss Forcible in their taffy-colored leotards, cotton candy dissolving on her tongue in a burst of pink sugar as the jumping mice spelled out her name in curling calligraphy.

And then she wakes up, and she hates herself for missing any single second of it. Reminds herself that none of that happiness was real, no matter how true it felt. And even if it was, no part of it was worth the sagging grimace of the Other Father's melting smile, or the wind-whistle wailing of the ghost children, or the stitches sewn into the corner of Other Wybie's mouth. Those are the mornings when Coraline closes her eyes and makes herself remember the feeling of the Beldam's needle-tipped fingers pricking holes in the shoulders of her pajamas, of falling asleep with saltwater tears drying on her cheeks in her parents' empty bed while they shivered in the Beldam's snowglobe prison.

They never ended up remembering what happened, and Coraline knows it's for the best. Still, that not-knowing doesn't do much to ease the guilt that so often feels like quicksand-thick mud sucking at the edges of her galoshes, the anger she feels at herself for once having been selfish enough to consider trading in her family for a button-eyed witch with a shark-toothed smile.

 _She_ 's who Coraline dreams of most of all.

After she and Wybie dropped the shattered metal fragments of the Beldam's severed hand down into the well—wrapped up in the fabric of her blanket and tied closed with the string dangling from the key—they'd shifted the wooden cover back over the black-mouth gap, sealing up the edges with cement-colored mud and shoveling dirt over the lid and telling themselves that would be enough.

Most days, Coraline's sure that it is. Most days, she breathes easy and tells herself the nightmare is over.

But there are nights just before she falls asleep when she swears she can hear a scrabbling at her window, fingertips scratching at the glass like sharpened spider legs. There are days when she hikes through the woods with the Cat at her heels and a whistled tune hanging behind her on the autumn wind and thinks of the water sloshing at the base of the well and the silver shards sitting below the surface. Imagines those crushed and shiny pieces of the Beldam's hand stitching themselves back together, digging for subterranean roots skinny enough to thread through the eye of a needle, piecing its fragmented self into some new nightmare. And then it's all-too-easy to imagine it ascending the rough and pitted walls of the well, carrying the key like a big black medal, crawling back to where its mother waits.

Because she's still there, and _that_ Coraline knows for a fact. Knows sure as anything that the Beldam's not dead—doesn't even think something like her _can_ be killed—and that somewhere on the other side of the wall, she's plotting and scheming at the pit of her sunken spider's web, looking for a new child to love.

And so how could any of them ever really be safe?

Sometimes she dreams she never left the Other World. In those, the Beldam makes her an offer of a shiny new life, and Coraline agrees with a naive smile, and then the Beldam starts threading the needle. In those, she learns the Other Father was right, and that the silver-tipped point is sharp enough she barely feels the stitches. She doesn't notice when the Beldam starts chewing at the edges of her soul, doesn't notice when she's shrunk down to a blue-spirit ghost, doesn't understand until she's trapped behind the mirror and beating at the glass with her phantasmal fists and realizes she's never going home.

Then she wakes up, sweat on the back of her neck and pajama shirt sticking to her skin, the Cat kneading at the tension in her muscles with firm and insistent paws. And eventually she starts breathing easy enough to see that the figures in her bedside photographs are as still and lifeless as the paper dragonflies strung between her bedposts. Eventually the heavy autumn air and the weight of her blanket and the warmth of the Cat against her leg become too real to ignore, and she knows she's awake and that she's okay.

Still, it's a coin flip whether she manages to fall back asleep.

 

—

 

Nobody but the ghost children could understand what happened to Coraline in the Other World, and so when her nightmares start to slip into the waking world, the list of people she can turn to is a nonexistent one. Sure, Wybie and his grandmother know the facts of the matter, but that knowing isn't a substitute for understanding. They know about the Beldam in an academic sense, but that doesn't mean they understand the frostbite fear Coraline felt the first time she watched the witch shed her human skin for something skeletal and spider-like. They know about the wager Coraline made, but they can't understand the way it felt to have her heart hammering jackrabbit fast against her ribs as she'd not just bargained for her own soul, but for that of her parents and the ghost children to boot.

They know, but knowing's not the same as understanding, and so the first time Coraline catches sight of a jumping mouse in the corner of her eye—spinning on the toes of her galoshes only to see a blank patch of hardwood floor—she's not really  sure who to tell. Especially after she pushes aside the couch and presses her ear to the wall and triple-checks the lock on the passage door and can't find a dang _thing_ , half-convinced it's her imagination and half-convinced the little rat is hiding _somewhere_ and not sure which scenario she'd prefer. Because either the Beldam's back and that's at least a fear she knows, or she can't trust her eyes anymore, and that's a new kind of scary Coraline doesn't want to explore.

That night, she falls asleep with a handful of rocks under her bedside table in case it comes back, but the first time she stirs and blinks her eyes open is well after sunrise and thanks to the sound of her father singing from somewhere downstairs. She keeps the half-collapsed pyramid of pebbles where they are, though. Just in case.

It happens for a second time when she's walking through town with her mother that Saturday. She's in the middle of skipping between the sidewalk cracks—going up on her tiptoes and pirouetting as needed to negotiate through the jagged black lines running across the pavement—when she passes a toy store and _swears_ she sees a button-eyed doll sitting in the window. Hair felted into a braid instead of falling in a blue-yarn bob and wearing miniature denim overalls instead of Coraline's yellow slicker, but eyes as big and dead-black as she remembers, stitched neatly onto the fabric. And it's alarming enough to bring her to a sudden and unintended stop, her shoes falling flat right across a sharp line cut into the pavement, except Coraline's too fixated on the display behind the plate glass to notice that she's just lost her game.

But then she blinks, and it's not a spy with button eyes and false promises in its smile, but a porcelain thing propped up on a white wire stand with big brown eyes painted to look like the real thing. Not the work of the Beldam at all.

She's startled enough that she stays there until her mother catches up to her, brushing past the display with an unconcerned, "not today, Coraline, but the holidays are coming in a couple months and we can talk then."

And that's how it goes, every few days or so. She'll be stretched out on the living room couch and she'll blink and the armoire in the corner will be replaced by a big cockroach-looking thing with cabinets carved into its chest cavity and feelers twitching, waiting on the Beldam's orders. She'll be walking past a ground-floor window box planted with snapdragons and see them stretching out to bite at her ankles on extended leafy stems, only to turn her head and notice that they're just swaying in the wind. And that's when Coraline starts to be sure that she'll live with this fear forever — that they could move out of the Pink Palace, could cross county lines and state borders and even whole _oceans_ and she'd still be looking over her shoulder for the Beldam's reaching hands.

Part of her is sure the nightmare will never really be over, and that someday she'll be old as Wybie's grandmother, feet up on the front porch, still hearing the furious sound of the Beldam's beating fists against the locked living room door.

 

—

 

Then, slowly, she starts to let go, and it all begins with Mr. Bobinsky.

It's a Sunday afternoon in October when she hears a knock at the front door, opening it to find Mr. B. at the threshold with his worn black boots standing between the jack-o-lanterns she'd carved with her dad and a battered top hat pinched between his fingers.

"Famous jumping mice circus is finally ready, Caroline," he says, half-whispering the words like they're something secret. "The mice call you some kind of savior, say they save first performance for you." He reaches into the top hat and pulls out a wrinkled invitation card, imprecise calligraphy inviting "Caroline" to the circus' premiere that afternoon, a Russian seal printed in dripping red wax along the bottom.

"Oh," she says, letting her eyes linger on the looping handwriting and feeling out the ridges in the wax with her fingertip and hoping her tone is just the right amount of surprised and doesn't betray the fear she's feeling underneath.

Because Coraline had certainly seen the other tenants of the Pink Palace after her return from the Other World at her parent's garden party—taking breaks from planting tulips to serve up glasses of box-mix lemonade to Miss Spink and Forcible, raising her eyebrows at Mr. Bobinsky, buried up to his forearms in dirt and surreptitiously swapping tulip bulbs for purple beets—but for all that the afternoon had been easy and comfortable, she hadn't been able to bring herself to visit either of their apartments since. She'd run into her neighbors as often as anyone would when sharing a three-unit complex, but had always politely turned down Spink and Forcible's invitations to afternoon tea, had steadfastly avoided braving the upper levels of the fire escape outside Bobinsky's door. Even now, weeks later, her memories still remained too fresh of bat wings beating against her face as she'd wrestled one of the ghost eyes from the sticky fingers of the cocooned acrobats, twisted around one another like black licorice. Her skin still crawling from the phantom feeling of sharp-edged rat claws scratching at her skin as Mr. B's—the _Other_ Mr. B's—empty clothes collapsed onto the wood.

"So, Caroline, what do you say, eh?" Bobinsky asks, rocking back and forth on his heels.

And she could say _no_ , and it'd be easy, too — a half-dozen excuses already sitting on her tongue to sidestep the invitation she's holding that seems to be written on the back of an empty Fed-Ex envelope.

But Coraline's also tired of feeling afraid, so she compromises instead.

"Could my friend come, too?" She asks, blinking up at Mr. B. who squints back at her. "His name's Wybie and he's—" she pauses, eyebrows pulling together as she tries to find the right words to describe Wybie, "—well he's not _perfect_ , but I promise he won't disturb the mice or spoil the circus."

"You wish to bring a guest to your special thank-you performance?" Mr. Bobinsky asks, flipping the top hat onto his head and shrugging the sharp angles of his shoulders. "How can I or the mice refuse? Very well, Caroline. Bring this friend of yours and performance shall be twice as special." He dips low into a bow, nose nearly brushing against the welcome mat before springing back up to his full height. "Do svidaniya, Caroline."

And then he's off the porch and out of sight and Coraline's left standing in the open door holding an invitation that smells faintly like old cheese and realizing she needs to go find Wybie.

 

—

 

"Why are we going, again? My grandma says Mr. B's crazy."

"He's not crazy," Coraline says, elbowing Wybie as they take the fire-escape stairs two at a time. "He's eccentric. Besides, there's no _way_ this jumping mice circus is real, but I gotta see what he has planned anyway. Come on, why-are-you-so-boring — aren't you at least a little curious?"

She finishes asking the question just as they reach the upper landing, and doesn't leave Wybie a chance to respond before she's reaching out to knock a couple times against the door.

"Wasn't there a jumping mice circus in the Other World?" Wybie asks under his breath as they hear shuffling coming from inside.

"Yeah," Coraline says, taking a slow breath she hopes Wybie doesn't notice. "That's why you're here, too."

It's another beat before the door swings open, but where the one in the Other World had spun Coraline and Other Wybie inside like a carnival ride, this time she can see Mr. B. standing just past the threshold, one hand on the knob and the other outstretched and inviting. And he's dressed up in uniform, just like the Other Mr. B. had been, but instead of a military coat that's black and glossy and stitched with shiny gold thread, this one is gray and weathered, with fraying seams and a patch across the elbow. He's got military medals pinned to his chest, dull and chipped instead of the bright, brass-colored things of the Other World — not just confections spun by the Other Mother, but clearly years-old and _real_. He's wearing the battered top hat and he's got a rip across the knee of his pants and the whole image is charming and also imperfect and just like that, Coraline finds herself breathing a little easier.

"Welcome, welcome, Caroline and Caroline's guest—" Bobinsky says as she and Wybie cross the threshold, swinging the door shut behind them, "—to famous jumping mice circus. Circus finally ready and you two are first to see it — it's exciting, no?"

Coraline nods solemnly, sharing a smile with Wybie as Bobinsky turns on the heel of his scuffed boots—the Beldam _never_ would have let Other Bobinsky walk around with scuffed boots—and disappears somewhere into the corner. They're standing alone in the front hall, but this time the walkway isn't lined with cotton candy cannons or a popcorn dispenser spinning like a carousel. Instead, there's a rickety wooden stand carrying a bowl of purple-red beets and a hand-painted cardboard sign across the front that reads "BEETS" and then, smaller and in parentheses, "make you strong".

"Do we—?" Wybie asks, tilting his head towards the basket.

Coraline shrugs and takes a couple steps forward into the room, scooping up two of the lumpy purple vegetables and tossing one back at Wybie, juggling the other between her hands.

"Come on, Wybie, don't you want to be strong?"

"If it's by eating beets, then, uh, no."

The Other Mother never would have served beets, and Coraline finds she loves the vegetable that much more because of it.

She's turning slowly, looking around at the faded patterned wallpaper, coated in dust and cobwebs instead of family photos, when Mr. B. returns, bounding back into the room with the tail of his coat swishing around the backs of his knees.

"Follow me for famous circus, Caroline and Caroline's guest," he says, ushering them down the hall towards the shape of something tent-like sitting at the end of the room. And Coraline feels a brief flash of fear, for a moment, as she remembers crawling inside the Other Mother's red-and-white striped circus, of chasing the scabbed and red-eyed rat out through the fabric with the ghost child's eye pinched between its teeth. But then they get closer, and instead of something shiny and pristine, she sees a half-dozen sheets stitched together and suspended from the ceiling with fishing wire and it doesn't look like a tent so much as a mess and she finds it's not hard at all to crawl inside.

"Must ask audience to hold applause until end of show, understand?" Mr. B. says once they're both inside and seated, knees pulled up to their chests in the small rectangle cordoned off with duct tape. "Applause distract the mice, throw off rhythm, and what is famous jumping mice circus if famous jumping mice lose rhythm? Not famous jumping mice circus at all!" He straps a large drum over the fabric of his military coat and nods a few times in Coraline's distraction, and just like that, the show starts.

It's not quite a disaster, but it's close.

Coraline's prepared for the honey-colored mice with curling question mark tails that first brought her to the Other World, and she's prepared for the oversized rats with gray fur and knowing eyes she'd seen when she'd understood the truth of things, but the last thing she expects are the small white mice that enter the ring, looking for all the world like they've been picked up in a pet store, if a few years older. And for every moment that they manage, by chance, to keep in time with the _oompah, oompah_ rhythm being set by Mr. Bobinsky, the rest of the time, they're scurrying around the confines of the tent's gray sheet walls while the frantic Mr. B. tries to shepherd them back into formation, their whiskers twitching and nosing curiously at Coraline's shoes. Before the performance is over, she's laughing harder than she has in weeks, hard enough that she's leaning against Wybie for support and can feel her stomach muscles aching.

Mr. B. eventually sees them both out with a distracted wave as one of the mice makes its way up his pant leg, shoving another handful of beets in their direction while Coraline hides hiccuping bursts of laughter behind her hands. And after the door swings closed, and she's skipping down the fire escape steps with Wybie at her heels and beets stuffed into the pockets of her jacket, she finds that she's loved every second of the afternoon for how _genuine_ it had been — as imperfect and real as her father's steamed vegetables or getting a B- on a school project or stubbing her toe when going up the stairs.

(The following day, she makes Bobinsky a certificate of construction paper and glitter for his world famous jumping mice circus, sliding it through his mail slot for him to find. She sees it hanging in his front hall on her next visit—leaving Wybie behind, this time—sitting squarely in the middle of the empty wallpaper, slightly crooked and pinned up with scotch tape stretched across the corners.)

It's not the candy-sweet illusion the Beldam had first built, and it's not the twisted nightmare that had been lurking just below the surface, but something so squarely in between — something that the Beldam, for all her witchery and all her tricks, could never replicate. It's some humble and human bedrock that Coraline can sink roots into, can anchor herself to this moment when memories of the Other World start nipping at her heels.

And it's a few days later before she realizes that she hasn't seen any more of the Beldam's illusions in her waking world, that she hasn't suffered a single nightmare since returning from the circus. It feels like something worth celebrating, so she finds an old frame and presses Bobinsky's invitation between the glass and wood and gives the whole thing a place of honor on her bookshelf.

It still reads "Caroline". She never corrects it.


End file.
